Friday Night Drinking Games
by Troll Princess
Summary: A JakeX-Men crossover. Jakes finds himself saved by a strange woman during a mission, and the two have more in common than either one of them knows. A "Pairing List That Ate Fandom" story.


Title: Friday Night Drinking Games (A Pairing List That Ate Fandom story.)  
  
Author: Troll Princess  
  
Fandoms: Jake 2.0/X-Men  
  
Rating: PG  
  
Spoilers: I suppose this covers "The Prince and the Revolution" for Jake (even though this is definitely after that), and ... well, if you know who Rogue is, you're good. I was as vague as could be, although that was more for my benefit than yours.  
  
Disclaimer: Rogue and the X-Men are owned by Marvel, blah blah ownershipcakes. As for Jake, I don't own him, either. But just you wait for Christmas and check under my tree. Oh, yes. *nods solemnly*  
  
**********Friday Night Drinking Games**********  
  
The last thing that went through Jake Foley's mind when he was thrown out of the airplane, aside from that he should have grabbed a parachute on the way out, was that he wasn't sure he wanted to know if the nanites had a solution for being flung bodily out of an airliner at 25,000 feet.  
  
He winced as a mental image of giant metal wings suddenly sprouting from his back popped into his head. Okay, he definitely needed to lay off watching the Sci-Fi Channel.  
  
A chill wind swirled around Jake as he fell, tugging at his skin and whipping his hair into a frenzy. He tried to think of an option which didn't end with his body slamming into the pavement and being shipped back to Diane in a paper lunch bag for intensive study, but he definitely wasn't that creative.  
  
Okay, this right here? This was bad. This was such an incredible level of bad, Michael Jackson would have been jealous.   
  
Jeez, even his jokes were getting worse.  
  
Jake briefly contemplated calling Diane on his cell phone and asking if he'd survive a squishing at the speed of gravity, but he was pretty sure the answer would be a solid no. Besides, if he was about to die, he didn't want his last words to involve questioning if having itty bitty computers in his bloodstream meant he'd also had a rocket shoved up his ass. And if he could help it, screaming and whimpering weren't going to make his rather short list of options, either.  
  
If he really were creative, he supposed he could take mental control of the airplane's steering and fly the thing close enough to catch him. Of course, that could also result in him splattering against the inner wall of a jet full of explosives instead of a cornfield.  
  
So, yeah. Maybe not.  
  
Jake took a deep breath and mentally prepared for his far too early demise, suddenly grateful that it wasn't going to be from the nanites flipping out and making his head explode.   
  
And that was when the train hit him.  
  
Funny, how the train was a mile or so above ground level. And also, how the train had an impressive set of breasts.  
  
Jake blinked for a moment in stunned silence, then glanced over at the train, which to his surprise was shaped like a woman. An incredibly gorgeous woman who, as luck would have it, was casually flying with him in his arms.  
  
Ah. So this is what dead was like. Being flown around the place by a sexy babe who apparently dressed from head to toe in spandex. Why he hadn't tried this whole dead thing sooner, he'd never know.  
  
Her green eyes sparkled as she glanced up towards the rapidly departing plane. "Hey, sugah," she said, her words rolling past her lips in a honey-smooth Southern drawl. "Forgettin' somethin'?"  
  
He froze for a second, staring at her gorgeous face and beautiful smile and trying desperately to remember the English language. Then, his mouth working faster than his brain, Jake blurted out, "You're flying."  
  
He immediately grimaced. Yeah, smooth move, moron. The fact that he didn't feel a million tiny computerized kicks in the ass came as a shock.  
  
She cocked an eyebrow at that, then said, "And you're not. Y'know, you're s'posed to put on the parachute and then jump out of the plane."  
  
He squirmed awkwardly, wondering how to explain international terrorists with major explosives to a strange woman who could fly, and simply said, "I tripped."  
  
"Yeah, Ah'll bet," she said, her voice edged with skepticism. But instead of prying further, she paused in midair so that the both of them could see the plane flying off. "Y'want me to put you back where Ah found you?"  
  
"Uh, not to get technical or anything, but if you put me back where you found me, it's back to plummeting to Earth at a hundred miles an hour."  
  
Pause. "Point taken."   
  
They exchanged a grin at that, even though Jake was starting to feel incredibly foolish being cradled in the arms of a flying, talking Playboy centerfold. He was a split second from agreeing that she probably should take him back into the fun and exciting world of international espionage and extreme skydiving when a pair of fighter jets flew past in hot pursuit of the terrorists's plane. Jake concentrated with practiced ease, and a quick nanite-fueled eavesdrop on the pilots's radios told Jake exactly what he'd wanted to hear.  
  
That Kyle and the other agents back on the terrorists's flight were doing fine without him.  
  
Even if they did think he was now roughly the size, shape and consistency as a half-cooked pancake.  
  
********  
  
After Jake called Louise and assured her that the billions of dollars worth of nanotechnology racing through his system was still intact, *and* called Kyle to tell him that he was still in one extremely embarrassed piece, and called Diane to assure her that he would only be sucking at Boggle this weekend instead of sucking rather nicely through the nozzle extension of a Hoover ... then and only then could Special Agent Jake Foley finally admit that he couldn't feel anything below his knees.  
  
Oh, it wasn't some sort of medical emergency or any malfunction of the nanites. No, it was simply the winning combination of a beautiful Southern belle waiting to have a drink with him and the fact that there wasn't several thousand feet of open air between himself and the ground anymore.  
  
Walking slowly back to the booth at the far corner of the bar, Jake squinted through the dark, smoky shadows to reassure himself that the goddess who'd saved him hadn't decided he wasn't worth the time and effort or vanished or anything like that. Women who looked like that tended to give him a wide berth, with the exception of Diane, who really was more best-bud material than anything else, and Sarah, whom he was beginning to think only talked to him to relive fond memories of getting wasted in college.   
  
Yet there she sat, her dark reddish-brown hair cascading in waves down the back of her jacket as she casually sipped from a glass of soda. A pair of stark white locks of hair dangled before her eyes as she watched a football game on the bar's TV, tuning out the gawking of the guys in the bar with the practiced ignorance of someone who'd gotten used to the way men looked at her and had simply gotten over it a long time ago.  
  
Jake frowned as he approached the booth, not all that sure what he was supposed to say to her. He guessed thanking her for saving his life was probably in order, although a request to marry him and bear his children was just begging to be embarrassingly slipped into the conversation.  
  
Reining his mouth in before it did any lasting damage, Jake slipped into the booth opposite her, offered up his patented goofy smile, and drummed his fingers on the tabletop nervously. She dragged her gaze away from the football game to share a smile with him, but something in her sparkling green eyes made Jake pause.  
  
She looked ... curious. Curious, considering how much he could be bought and sold for on the black market, could be bad.   
  
"So, how'd they take it?" she asked.  
  
"Fine." An awkward smile crossed his lips, as he remembered the little white lie he'd told to cover his ass when he'd run off to make the phone calls in the privacy of the men's bathroom.  
  
Which, when he thought of the looks on the faces of the guy at the urinal, probably wasn't as private as he'd thought. But anything was better than trying to make those calls in front of a woman who'd caught him as he'd free-fallen from 30,000 feet or so.  
  
Her eyes narrowed a bit at that, and said, "You fell out of a plane and your family's just fine?"  
  
Jake chose that moment to take a sip of his soda to cover his grimace. To be honest, Louise had wanted him to come down to the office to file his report on the plane incident yesterday if possible, Kyle had volunteered to come pick him up to make sure he hadn't been abducted, and it had taken five minutes of urging Diane to trust the PDA that logged the nanites's behaviors before she'd let him off the hook. He was still surprised he'd managed to buy himself just enough time to figure out who his mysterious savior was, but he supposed he was just getting better at this whole I-am-Nanite-Boy-All-will-fear-me vibe.  
  
Well, that, and he had ten minutes to get back to the NSA or Kyle and a special ops team were coming for him, but beggars and choosers, right?  
  
"Well," he said, "they did all ask if I'd worn clean underwear today."  
  
She shook her head at that. "Typical family, huh?"  
  
Jake chuckled against his better judgment, trying to think about how his mother would have reacted if he'd told her he'd been thrown out of an airplane today. She probably would have said the same thing Louise had said -- Pull a stunt like that again, and they'll never find your body. Granted, Louise meant it literally, but still. "Yeah, really," he said. "Besides, if it was clean before, it isn't now."   
  
She choked on her soda, and Jake felt his face flush what was probably an impressive shade of oh-I-did-not-just-say-that-out-loud crimson.  
  
As she tried to hold back her laughter, Jake bent forward and said quietly, "That was a joke, I swear."  
  
Brushing her dangling white bangs from her face, his savior grinned and said, "You always joke like that with strange women you just met?"  
  
He shrugged, trying desperately to change the subject as the waitress brought over another Coke for him. "Speaking of which, you got a name?"   
  
She went quiet at that, and he asked, "Or should I just call you Shelby?"  
  
"Shelby?"  
  
"Yeah, you know. Steel Magnolias, Julia Roberts ... okay, you know what? I'm not allowed to watch movies with my mother on holidays anymore."  
  
She laughed softly at that, her eyes twinkling as she watched him run his fingers through his dark hair, leaving it a rumpled mess. Then, as if making a decision to herself, she pursed her lips, nodded slightly, and said, "It's Rogue."  
  
"Your name is Rogue?"  
  
"Mah mother was cruel," she said dryly.  
  
"Ah," Jake said, not pushing the matter. "You got a last name?"  
  
Rogue smiled at that, but something about it was hesitant and nervous at best. "Why? You gonna check me out or somethin'?"  
  
"No, I just--" Well, okay, maybe he had been thinking of looking her up, checking for a criminal record, maybe making sure she wasn't packing any weapons of mass destruction ... "You know what? Never mind. I'm Jake, by the way. Jake Foley."  
  
"Jake," she said, and he'd never heard his name sound sexier. "And you work as a ..."  
  
"Professional crash dummy, actually."  
  
He nearly expected her to break out laughing at that one, but instead, she furrowed her brow and answered just as mock-seriously as he had. "Oh, really?"  
  
"Oh, yeah. I get thrown out of planes and trains and automobiles just to see how many pieces the human body can end up in. Hell on the wardrobe, but the hazard pay makes up for it."  
  
She nodded in understanding, then leaned forward in the booth until her gloved hand nearly brushed his and said, "So, what's the most you've ever ended up in?"  
  
"A hundred and forty-two."  
  
"Really? Ah'd never be able to tell."  
  
"I get a special deal on Super Glue."   
  
Rogue nodded, punctuating the gesture with a "Well, of course you would" expression.  
  
Then, their gazes connected, and the pair of them burst out laughing and didn't stop for a full minute.  
  
Their giggles finally dying away, Jake took a swig from his soda and slipped into his easiest cover story. "Seriously, though, I'm in IT."  
  
"IT, huh?"  
  
"Yeah, I'm the guy who shows up when your computer freezes and complains when you don't defrag."   
  
Rogue flashed him a look hovering between annoyed and amused that clearly stated, "Oh, Ah've met one of your kind before. Hyperkinetic, brainy, and speaks some kind of strange clickin' language that's mostly gibberish and HTML." Huh. Even her facial expressions spoke with a Southern accent.   
  
Jake couldn't help but watch her drink her soda with barely veiled amazement. He'd never been entirely outside of the range of pretty girls, but women who looked like Rogue tended to take one look at him and mark him as an untouchable computer geek from the start. Then again, girls who were into him at all were usually smuggling biochemical weaponry or arms disguised as dead relatives or, in Sarah's case, well-loved memories of shared drunken college experiences.   
  
Jake didn't even want to think about what Rogue might be smuggling. Although, considering what he'd already seen her do, his only guesses were a rocket pack or Flubber. Both of which, incredibly enough, he could live with. "What about you?" he asked. "What do you do?"  
  
"Professional superhero."  
  
Jake laughed. Rogue didn't.  
  
He stopped, then said, "You weren't joking, were you?"   
  
She shook her head.  
  
Jake felt a wave of guilt wash over him. Damn. She'd just ... she'd just come right out and admitted that one straight to his face. Uh, now was probably a bad time to renege on that IT cover story. "Sorry," he said.  
  
"Not a problem, sugah."  
  
"So that's why you were ..." He pointed skyward, and Rogue cocked an eyebrow as the corners of her mouth tugged upward. "Gravitationally challenged?"  
  
"Exactly," she said, then crossed her arms on the table and narrowed her eyes. She gave the Friday night crowds around them a cursory glance before saying, "How 'bout we make a deal, Jake? Ah won't ask about why your family didn't seem all that shocked to hear from you after you obviously fell out of an airplane in mid-flight, and you won't ask --"  
  
"Why you still haven't taken off your gloves?"  
  
The two of them looked down at Rogue's gloved hands before Rogue gave him an appreciative, appraising glance. She'd figured he'd noticed and not said anything just to be polite, but she'd been hopeful at that. Most people weren't that observant.  
  
But if there was one thing Jake was getting better at, it was observation. Especially when a woman made every movement and gesture a subtle, graceful attempt to keep from being touched.   
  
"Sound like a plan?" she said.  
  
"Sounds like a very good plan." Then, throwing all caution to the wind, Jake added, "Almost like a weekly, meet-here-for-drinks-and-work-free-venting kinda plan."  
  
There she went again, he thought, as her voice hitched with hesitation before she forced a smile and said, "You proposin' a date, Jake?"  
  
"Something like that, yeah."  
  
Her grin widening, Rogue got to her feet and dropped a twenty onto the table, then walked over and gave him a gentle, quick kiss on the top of his head. "Ah'll think about it," she said, and turned to leave.  
  
Jake shot to his feet as she walked away. "When do I get an answer?"  
  
"Come back here and ask me next week," she called over her shoulder.  
  
Jake couldn't contain his smile for the rest of the day. Even when Kyle came in two minutes later and dragged him out the front door like a recalcitrant toddler.  
  
Right. Same Bat time, same Bat bar booth.  
  
********  
  
Week One  
  
"... and every time Mulder and Scully are obviously a second away from pouncing on one another and having sex until they both drop, you sip."  
  
Rogue dragged her gaze away from the bar's plasma-screen TV to look over at Jake in amusement. "Only a sip?"  
  
"Yeah, you'd be wasted by the opening credits otherwise."  
  
"Ah."  
  
********  
  
Week Three  
  
"-- but see, that's why the third movie had to be made. Because if you just left the second movie the way it was, it didn't make any sense."  
  
Rogue looked down at the disordered colony of salt and pepper shakers scattered across the table with an amused grin. Jake's idea of explaining the entire story arc of the Terminator movies involved visual displays, makeshift models, and an extreme form of enthusiasm that would probably be dorky if it weren't kind of adorable. She reached out and picked up the 1985 Sarah Connor salt shaker, liberally salting her gravy fries. "Well, it did make sense," she said. "You just kept waitin' for John Connor to vanish into thin air like he shoulda done."  
  
"Exactly. I mean, no war, no time-traveling Michael Biehn --"  
  
"No pissed-off Sarah and no attack on Cyberdyne."  
  
"I know! I mean, I love the movies, but they totally sacrificed logic to get their little happy ending in Judgment Day."  
  
Rogue shook her head as Jake plucked an onion ring from the basket on the table, an awed smile crossing her face. "Ah can't believe Ah finally found someone who likes the Terminator movies as much as Ah do."  
  
Shrugging, Jake popped half of the onion ring into his mouth and said, "I have a thing for Linda Hamilton without body fat."  
  
"Yeah, well, between Michael Biehn and Nick Stahl, mah ex says Ah have a thing for guys who don't know how to shave right." She rolled her eyes at that and added, "Then again, he's prime example number one."  
  
Jake watched her swirl one of her fries around in the gravy with genuine conern, something about the look on her face making his heart go out to her. He liked this little Friday night ritual they'd started, getting together for beer and fried food and as close to real commiseration as he was going to get over nanite angst without either telling Rogue about the nanites or talking this sort of stuff over with Diane, Kyle or Louise. As long as he kept the details vague, he could talk to Rogue about "work" all he want and not have to worry about whether or not doing so was going to get him killed, abducted, or bitchslapped. He didn't know why he trusted her so much, but he wasn't about to ruin a good thing when the only out-of-the-ordinary thing she'd done was fly out of nowhere and save his life.  
  
Shaking off that train of thought before it headed down some tracks he'd much rather avoid, Jake cleared his throat and pointed to her empty beer bottle. "You want another round?"  
  
"You buyin'?"  
  
"Damn straight."  
  
********  
  
Week Seven  
  
"You're kidding."  
  
"Hey, gotta kill time somehow on long airplane rides," Rogue said, not bothering to look up from the house of sugar packets she was building.  
  
"Okay," Jake said hesitantly. He thought about it for a second, then lowered his voice and said, "Mommy, I want to go home! Grandpa wants me to feed the naked man in the basement again."  
  
Trying not to dissolve into giggles, Rogue nodded solemnly and said, "Not bad for a first-timer."  
  
"Thanks. I think."  
  
She winked at him as she placed the last sugar packet on her makeshift 'house', then leaned forward with a conspiratorial glint in her eyes. "Mommy, Ah want to go home! Grandpa's been in the bathroom for a half an hour, and Ah can't find my gerbil."  
  
For a long moment, Jake stared at her as if she were a goddess come down from Mount Olympus to grace him with her presence and offer up winning lottery tickets. Then, with an amazed laugh, he said, "That is the most disgusting thing I've heard all day."   
  
"You've never played with my friend Logan, sugar. Ah've got nothin' on him."  
  
He nodded, then stared down at the glasses in the center of the table. "Loser takes the shot, right?"  
  
"Oh, yeah."  
  
********  
  
Week Ten  
  
"No more gangsta rap."  
  
"Ooo, good one. Okay, my turn." Jake looked up from his buffalo wings just in time to catch a news clip of the president making a speech to a cluster of reporters on CNN. He grimaced and said, "They get all the big cities. All the politicians go first."  
  
"Ain't that the truth," Rogue said with a derisive snort. She took a drink of her Smirnoff before concentrating on an answer. "Ah'd never get stuck watchin' another 'Frasier' rerun again."  
  
"Yes," Jake said in absolute agreement. "If the world end tomorrow, I could definitely live without 'Frasier'. Why didn't I think of that one?"  
  
"Probably because you haven't fought tooth and nail for the remote with a crotchety bald telepath in a wheelchair."  
  
"I don't want to know, do I?"  
  
Grinning, Rogue shook her head.  
  
"You know, my partner has this thing for old episodes of 'Wonder Woman' --"  
  
"All right, that, Ah definitely don't want to know about."  
  
********  
  
Week Twelve  
  
Rogue stalked into the bar that week with all the indignation she could muster and even a little bit of indignation she managed to scrape off the jerk who bumped into her as he shoved his way past her going out the front door. She wasn't mad at Jake -- Rogue had quickly learned that 'mad at Jake' was not a strong or lasting concept in any capacity.   
  
No, she was just mad at ... at gloves. At gloves and long sleeves and guys who had the balls to be sweet and funny and charming when she couldn't even do anything about it.  
  
All right, so maybe she was a little mad at Jake.  
  
Not that it was his fault or anything. She had no idea why she'd come clean with him from the very beginning, but he'd just seemed so ... maybe innocent wasn't the word. Innocent men didn't fall out of airplanes, and if they did, there was usually a damn good reason that they were willing to share with anyone and everyone they came across. Innocent men who fell out of airplanes wanted to make sure you knew that they couldn't fly, they couldn't defy gravity, and they were incredibly pissed off at the person or deity who'd thought they could, and were willing to tell you all three of those in great detail, over and over again.  
  
They did not trip, for Pete's sake.  
  
But that wasn't why she was angry. That was why she was annoyed. Big difference.  
  
She was angry because every once in a while, when she was sitting on the other side of the table from Jake, she'd look over at him and try to imagine what it would be like to kiss him. And damn it, that wasn't what Friday nights were about.  
  
Friday nights were her getting down to Georgetown one way or another and settling into the corner booth of the comfortably loud sports bar Jake had taken her to that first time. Friday nights were venting about her week with someone who wasn't an X-Man, listened to her ramble on as if he knew what it was like, and didn't judge her in the least. Friday nights were making a drinking game out of everything from whether the next person to walk into the bar would be a guy or a girl to who could name the most 'Real World' roommates. One of these days, she knew one of them was going to call off due to emergency rebooting (if Jake's life story held any merit) or saving the world (although most villains tended to hold off on trying to conquer the world until the work week, presumably for the redundancy of ending the world as we know it on a Monday).  
  
But until then, Friday nights were the closest thing to normal she got anymore.  
  
And that's when she spotted Jake.   
  
Sitting by himself in the booth, eyes closed, hands clasped together so that he could rest his forehead against them, looking more serious than she'd ever seen him.  
  
Rogue froze.   
  
"Jake?"   
  
He didn't look up, and for a split second, Rogue wondered why he'd even bothered to show up tonight. Slowly, she walked over and settled into the seat across from him. "You all right, sugah?"  
  
"I killed a man today."   
  
Rogue frowned. Well, that was ... disconcerting.  
  
Then again, it didn't seem to be disconcerting Jake quite as much as it should be for a first-timer. Which meant her suspicion about the IT job being a lame ruse was dead on target. "What happened?"  
  
"He came after me and my partner. He pulled a gun, and he hit my partner." Jake looked past his steepled fingers at her with a far too meaningful look. "I hit back."  
  
Rogue smiled wryly, then quickly let it slip away. Oh, yeah. Been there, done that, had the entire freakin' specifically labeled wardrobe. She leaned closer and said softly, "How's your partner?"  
  
"A broken leg," he said. "But it could have been worse."  
  
That was true, Rogue thought with a grimace. If there was one thing Rogue had learned, it was that there was always a worse ending to any situation. Then, cautiously, she stepped into verbal territory she wasn't even sure she wanted to get close to. "You hit back."  
  
"I was being literal."  
  
"Oh," she said. She'd figured as much, but Jake just didn't inspire those kind of thoughts. Then again, neither did she. "You always punch people into a grave, sugah?"  
  
"Only this week," Jake said, and Rogue was sure that if there'd been a beer in front of him, he would have punctuated that with a healthy chugging.  
  
"What are you, Jake?"  
  
He stared across the table at her, silently assessing her before saying, "I'm not sure it'd be safe to tell you."  
  
Rogue frowned at that, then leaned closer so they wouldn't be overheard and gave him a look that indicated he should know better by now. "Jake, Ah just had another psycho with a God complex drop a water tower on me yesterday. Trust me, mah protection ain't what you should be worried about here."   
  
He relaxed at that a little, but still he kept silent.  
  
"Are you a mutant?"  
  
"No," he said, punctuating it with a tight shake of his head. Then he gave her a pointed look and said, "Not like you, anyway."  
  
"Didn't think so." She reached over before he could stop her and grabbed one of his hands with her gloved ones. "Don't think that whatever you have to tell me will be somethin' new and different for me. 'Cause if so, Ah'm goin' to have to tell you the entire history of the Summers family."  
  
"Who?"  
  
"Sugar, sane people shouldn't be shouldered with the Summers family history without boatloads of preparation. Now, spill it, Foley."  
  
He nodded, then took a deep breath. "You ready?"  
  
"Ah think so."  
  
"I'm going to say it."  
  
"Ah think Ah can handle it."  
  
"There's no going back from --"  
  
"Jake," she said, her voice a steady, calm demand.  
  
Jake winced at that. Then, staring Rogue straight in the eye and taking another deep breath, he blurted out, "I was in a lab accident where I was accidentally injected with millions of tiny robot computers called nanites which attached themselves to my nervous system and made me superstrong and gave me heightened senses and now I can control computers with my mind. And also, I'm a secret agent for the NSA."  
  
To say that what went through Rogue's head at that moment was everything and nothing all at once would have been a glorious understatement. Rogue was positive she was supposed to say something, anything, in response to Jake's announcement. But if she'd been asked point blank at that precise moment what the appropriate response was, Rogue wouldn't have been able to decide between "That's nice," "Do they tickle?" or "Penguins have stolen my underpants."  
  
Certain announcements, Rogue suddenly realized, called for less speaking in coherent sentences and more helpless gawking.  
  
So, with that in mind, Rogue smiled weakly and said, "Oh."  
  
Jake frowned. "You have nanite face."  
  
"What?"  
  
"Every time I tell a girl I'm full of nanites, they get that face."  
  
Now it was Rogue's turn to frown. "You tell enough girls you're full of nanites for there to be an official face?"  
  
He squirmed at that. "Well, there was just the one, but that's the face she made. You're not about to slap me, too, are you?"  
  
"Why? Is there an official nanites slap?"  
  
Jake's brow furrowed as he stared at her in genuine confusion. "You're being incredibly calm about this whole thing."  
  
"You'd be amazed how much practice Ah've got at it."  
  
"Not slapping people?"  
  
"Bein' calm over big, earth-shatterin' secrets gettin' revealed."  
  
He nodded at that, and the two of them shared an awkward smile before Jake said, "So, still friends?"  
  
"Still friends."   
  
Another smile, then ...   
  
"So."  
  
"So."  
  
"Ready to tell me why you always wear the gloves?"  
  
"Not a chance."  
  
Jake smiled at that. As curious as he was, he wouldn't have it any other way.  
  
********  
  
Week Fifteen  
  
"This one was when Ah got bit by the neighbor's Rottweiler when Ah was seven."  
  
"I can beat that." Jake propped his foot up on the corner of the table and tugged the leg of his pants up until it revealed a nasty, ragged scar on his knee. "Dropped a computer tower on my leg my senior year of high school."  
  
Rogue examined it with the trained professionalism of someone who either recieved or dispensed scars on a regular basis, then shook her head with unimpressed glee, rolling her eyes melodramatically. "Please," she said, before resting her right leg on the corner of the rable and pointing in a grand gesture towards a large scuff on the toe of her boot. "Dropped a Caddy on mah foot in the midst of battle. Didn't stop hearin' about it for months."  
  
Jake frowned at that one, and she pursed her lips. "Hey, Ah paid good money for these boots, sugah."  
  
Shaking his head, Jake lifted his left arm and bent his arm up so that Rogue could get an eyeful of his elbow. "Broke my arm when I was thrown off a building during an assignment."  
  
Rogue narrowed her eyes and leaned close, giving his arm a good, long study before declaring, "You ain't got a scar there."  
  
"I didn't say I had a scar there. I said I broke my arm. Huge difference." He took a pull off his beer bottle before grinning and adding, "Besides, I like to imagine there's a scar there. It makes me feel manly."  
  
"Ah'll bet." Rogue shook her head in disbelief as she wiped absently at a damp spot on the tabletop with her napkin. "Sugah, what is it with you and jumpin' off high places without parachutes?"  
  
"Hey! There was no jumping. There was only shoving by terrorists. Twice."  
  
"That's what they all say."  
  
"Oh, shut up."  
  
"Make me."  
  
"If those are the new rules, we're going to be here all night."  
  
"Am Ah complainin'?"  
  
"No, you're not." They exchanged a knowing smile, the kind of secretive look only friends can give one another when they know that all can only be right with the world if they're constantly ripping into one another.  
  
A mangled version of "Jingle Bells" arose at another table, and neither one of them could resist a smile as they took in the twinkle lights and mistletoe hanging from the bar's ceiling. The pair of them eyed the sprig of mistletoe dangling directly over their heads, both making Christmas wishes they knew Santa wouldn't grant, before Jake leaned across the table with all the enthusiasm of a toddler and said, "So, what are you getting me for Christmas anyway?"   
  
Rogue opened her mouth to answer, but not before Jake could add, "And if you say a parachute, you buy the next round."  
  
Smirking, Rogue held up a twenty and waved the bartender over. Then, a sly grin crossing her face, she leaned over to Jake and whispered, "A big red one. With polka dots."  
  
Even though he knew better, Jake tried in desperation to resist turning his head and kissing Rogue right then and there under the mistletoe.  
  
And suddenly, getting a parachute for Christmas felt like the best present ever. As long as Rogue was the one who gave it to him. 


End file.
